Cherished
by AshNapalm
Summary: 5 times Toni Stark is handled roughly by the people in her life, and 1 time someone refuses to be anything but gentle. Female!Tony


**disclaimer: I do not own anything Marvel and do not profit from this work.**

* * *

><p><strong>Cherished<strong>

* * *

><p>She knocks <em>something important<em> off of Daddy's desk and he smacks her across the face.

Natasha Stark is four years old and _careful_, because Mommy says she has to be _careful_ if she wants to be in Daddy's study, and she _does, _so she's always very, _very _careful. More careful than she is when she's wearing pretty dresses that **cannot get dirty, Natasha** and more careful than when she's secretly reading over Daddy's notes because **that is for boys only, Natasha Antonia Stark! **Because she wants to be around Daddy, and she didn't _mean _to pull the paper or to make the thing fall.

She doesn't even know what it was, only that now it's shattered pieces of glass scattered across the floor, fanning out like a firework in sparkling pieces of frosted clear and hypnotic blue.

The room is silent as Daddy and Obie stop talking over their contracts, and the broken glass trembles as Daddy's feet stomp across the floor to her. She cowers a little, but looks up – she's expecting his angry face, because Daddy's work is _serious_ and everything on his desk is _important_ for work and she has to _look in my face while I'm talking to you, Natasha, you're a Stark _even when he's yelling –

"Howard!-"

Her cheek is screaming over Obie's shout but she can't do anything because suddenly Daddy is grabbing her arm so hard that it hurts, adjusting the placement of his fingers as he drags her across the study. He throws open the door and shoves her through it, still silent even as she trips and falls onto the oriental rug, ripping the hem of her dress, and slams the door just as she turns around.

"_Howard," _Obie's voice is muffled through the door. _"It's just a model. It's not even of something important, just something to shut the hippies up-"_

"_It's all important, Obadiah," _her father snarls back in the anger she had been expecting for herself, accompanied by the tinkling of glass. _"I can't fix – damn. She's useless! Why do I even let her in here-"_

"_She's just a little girl…"_

She doesn't realize she's crying until the salt of the tears sting the cut Daddy's ring made across her cheek.

* * *

><p>(It will be the first time she'll be able to recall her father striking her, and even if it's not the last it will be the one she will always remember with perfect childlike clarity.)<p>

Tiberius is sucking at her neck, his hands skimming down her sides, her back against the wall of his apartment.

"C'mon, Natasha," he whispers against the slicked skin, hot, and her nose scrunches even as her body hums in pleasure of his attentions.

"Don't call me that," she demands, because she's been "Toni" since the minute she walked into MIT.

He laughs, low and taunting, licking a stripe up to her ear. "_Natasha_," he growls again, and then – "_Toni, baby. _You know I love you. Please." He presses a kiss to jaw, his hand drifting across her breast. _Please."_

She's sixteen and allowed to say yes. Tiberius Stone is all sorts of the perfect Toni thinks she needs – rich and intelligent and sexy – and the criticism he tosses out about _Howard_ is way more hot than it should be. Here, in his apartment, against the wall and in his bed, she's allowed to say yes. Even when he holds too tight on her wrists or doesn't wait until she's completely ready and finished before he remembers her. (Sometimes, sometimes she doesn't want to, and sometimes she'll say no, but his hands are soft and he _understands_, damn it, he gets her problems, and she'll let her no fade to a yes that makes him happy).

(It will be Rhodey, stupid honorable James Rhodes, who will see the bruises on her wrists that are the perfect shape of Tiberius' hands. It will be Rhodey who will Toni is _she's _stupid, because can't she see what this is, what Tiberius is doing to her? And Toni will yell back, will scream that she likes it rough, to be held down, and does he really want to know everything about her sex life? Because she can sure as hell help him out with that! And maybe they will stop talking for a while. And when she does finally break up with Tiberius, it will be two months before her graduation, when he will laugh at the idea of her taking over the company because **you're a girl, Natasha**, and she'll sign off from the relationship with a solid punch to his face that will make Rhodey smile).

* * *

><p>Pepper is Toni's best friend outside of Rhodey.<p>

It's not a confirmed friendship. A confirmed friendship involves _talking _and _emotions _and Toni does not do that shit, no.

But there's something about the redheaded woman in the sharp stilettos and no-nonsense attitude that just puts Toni at _ease. _Pepper Potts is efficient and far too focused on actually working, but her blunt honesty and dedication to Toni's interest _(_personal assistants are the best inventions, really) make her trustworthy enough that Toni doesn't feel the need, for the first time in years, to watch her back. Rhodey likes her, too, so that's another set of bonus awesome points.

Toni lets Pepper hand her things – lets Pepper drag her from the lab – lets Pepper send her to board meetings – lets Pepper order around JARVIS (to an extent, but hey, Pepper is the best friend but Toni is the motherfucking _Parent and Sibling and Child and Protector_ to JARVIS, so an extent is perfectly understandable, and it's more than Rhodey gets).

So, yes, Pepper is her best friend, the only other female in her life, and while she snarks and pretends to ignore what she says, Toni tries so very hard to be something Pepper can be pleased with.

So when the other woman makes a criticism, points out a flaw, gets exasperated or angry or fed up, it eats at the engineer like needles to her gut, metal shaving at her bones, and she bends over backward until Pepper's pleased with her again, because she just _wants that._

(This will always be a problem. Pepper Potts is order and control and power and everything Natasha Stark should have been, while Toni Stark is chaos and spontaneity and narcissism and everything that drives Pepper crazy. They will try – the friendship will become solid with years and not with talk – but the evolution to make it more will only make it worse, until Toni will stand in center and let herself be ripped apart before giving either up).

* * *

><p>Obie has been a father to her, even when Howard was still alive and breathing and very much there to fill the spot himself.<p>

In Afghanistan she never thinks about what happens to her as _torture_, even though distantly she knows that is exactly what it is. But her mind can only compute terror, and pain, and _**water**__, _and the very insistent, burningly firm part of her mind that demands _**No.**_She lets them break her bones and rip her skin and drown her lungs instead of saying yes. Yinsen asks about family, and at night she dreams of missiles and Pepper and Rhodey and Obie.

She escapes with an arc reactor (of all the damn things) buried in the cavity of her chest, goes home to stir up more chaos, safe under the weight of Rhodey and Pepper and Obie. And then only Pepper and Obie, because Rhodey's mad (and that's okay, because while Rhodey's mad, Toni's infuriated and has lit both weapons and men on fire, letting them burn in the wake of her rage without remorse).

Obie was there when Howard's anger was too much. He was there when she started building, at all the science fairs and presentations and awards. He was there when the newspapers screamed scandal, when she sat alone while Howard and her mom shouted at one another _about her_, when she lowered the bodies of her parents into the dirt, when she canceled Stark Industries' weapon contracts.

And now he's here, cradling her neck so her heard doesn't slam against the back of the couch as he slowly lowers her down. His eyes are fond, his smile kind, and he's holding her weapon against her ear, paralyzing her body as he waxes poetic about the beauty of her _mind, _as he confesses to ordering _terrorists _to _kill her_, as he strokes her hair away from her face with all of the paternal affection she has always soaked up from him, as he pulls an instrument she recognizes from the side.

_No, Obie, _she pleads, but even her inner is quiet, shocked as _Obie_ pushes the instrument against her chest, and it clicks and whirrs and _**rips her heart from her chest**_.

He leaves her on the couch to die, gasping for breath and unable to move as he gives her head one last pat before moving away, _leaving, _saying something about Pepper and living and she's dying and _**angry **_and he's _gone._

(She will kill him. She will fight him and she will kill him. She won't think about who he was, who she let him be to her throughout her life. How much she trusted him, _loved him_. She only thinks of the man who was responsible for Yinsen's death, for selling weapons _she made_ to terrorists who used them to kill innocent soldiers and civilians, who is threatening to kill Pepper. She will kill him, and only when she watches his armor and his body burn will she silently tell him that she would have given him the damn company, if only he had asked.

She will always dream about him).

* * *

><p>There is maybe something to be said about an organization of super spies who cannot tell the difference between a persona and a real person.<p>

Or maybe Natasha Romanoff should just give up on her career aspirations to become a professional therapist, because the file she's complied for Iron Man has given Toni a lot of shit.

(Honestly, how were you supposed to act when you were a _dying superhero with the weight of country-wide (and some international) protection on your fucking shoulders_? Excuse her for not facing death with the calm demeanor of someone who had lived a full life, she was fourty-fucking-one and had been really trying to live on that whole "turning over a new leaf" thing she had been doing.)

The billionaire is not too proud to admit that Fury's concept of a team of superheroes had some merit (and is actually really freaking cool, she can totally admit to that). However, getting said team together by providing them with half-assed "professional" personal files on each other? Fucking ridiculous, obviously, and anyone with half-a-brain should realize the same.

It takes Toni two weeks after the dubbed "Avengers" move in to the Tower to notice – the most obvious are Natasha and Clint, but as they're assassins for SHIELD who make a living out of being emotionless killing machines, it just flows over her.

Steve, however. Steve watches her, unblinking, during meals, always on the edge of his chair, defensive. He's suspicious when she hands Clint a new prototype arrow she's trying out, rolls his eyes and huffs in irritation when she flirts outright with Bruce, smirks when Natasha ignores her, and clenches his jaw when she asks to measures Thor's bicep. During missions his tone is harder, cooler with her, and more often than not what leaves his mouth is a reprimand.

The problem is, is that … Captain America has been the hero to kids since the second World War, but Steve Rogers has always been Toni's. His words on the helicarrier had hurt like hell, but hers had been just as harsh, and she knows that it was all because of Loki and his fucking stick of destiny or whatever. Fine. But now Rogers is living with her, sharing daily existence with her, and he still regards her with the same cool attitude, the burning dislike.

She doesn't know what the fuck she did wrong.

( "Talk to him," Bruce had suggested; nudged his shoulder against hers as they had waited for test results to flash on the screen. She had huffed then, shoving him back in good humor that had made him chuckle, the conversation ended.)

In the end, she doesn't have to. Steve Roger's is new to the 21st century, and as such hasn't learned to clear his files or even lock his SHIELD-provided tablet. Her file is highlighted, tabbed right beside Howard's, as if he's been doing nothing but sitting in his room and comparing the two. The words are just as she remembers reading them, striking and final and _wrong, _damn it. She had been dying. That was excusable, right? Wasn't it?

In the end, she puts the tablet down and goes back to the lab, shrugs when Bruce asks if she talked to Steve, and doesn't.

(It will eventually come to a head. Toni's temper is vicious and Steve's hateful of bullies, even if the bully isn't actually a bully. She'll snap at Natasha over something stupid and Steve will defend Natasha (because it's not really a team, it's a group of people Tony just sometimes works with) and something is said and Toni's brain-to-mouth filter will just disappear, because at that point she'll have been up for 39 hours on top of 3 hours of sleep. She'll unleash hell about facing death and fear and _fuck them all_, watching as Steve and Clint's faces drain a little, as Natasha's eyes flicker and Thor appears genuinely upset on her behalf and Bruce will just disappear. And then they will never speak of it again, because _emotions. _Toni will go to bed and they will talk among themselves and if the file on Natasha Antonia Stark disappears, no one will say a word. And things will get better. And she will keep trying).

* * *

><p>Sex is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be hard, and hot, and satisfying as hell.<p>

Unless she's drunk, but she never remembers that anyway, so whatever that ends up being doesn't count.

"_Fuck, Bruce_."

The city is lit for the night, and Bruce is hovering over her. They're on his bed, in his sheets because his are cotton to her silk, and he's thrusting into her in slow, deep movements that make her nerves light up in shock at each push. Sweat drips from his skin and onto hers.

He's not holding her down – her hands are free to clutch at his shoulders as he presses his lips against her breasts, trails them along her collarbone, his hands bracing his weight and nothing more. There's not one single bruise on her skin, and their teasing foreplay had lasted for hours, long enough to have left more than several. She's panting harshly against his hair and he's puffing breaths against her neck, and they're both so close. He shifts, moving as he slips one hand between them, rubs her in a soft, gentle rhythm that is just enough to start a fire.

She bucks under him, desperate for friction, for speed, for _something_, but his hand stops to press against her hip instead, urging her back down to the bed, to be still, without enough pressure to mark.

"No, Toni," he whispers, the words a cool burst of air against her. "Just feel it. Just feel this. We d-don't have to hurry." She shudders with a groan as his hand goes back to its place, his weight bearing down just enough to make his point as the burning sensation returns. She knows he has to be as close as she is – she can feel his shoulders straining – but he keeps his motions slow and easy.

"Please," she whimpers. "Bruce, please. I want it. I want it, please. Pleasepleaseplease."

"No. _Shhhhh_." He presses his lips firmly against her temple, dances solid kisses across her face. He shifts again, just enough that his thrusts are hitting at just the right angle, and she's keening against him, the fire slowly spreading up her spine. He moves a little faster, just a little, but there is nothing hard to it, and she needs that – "_Shhhhh_." – she does, but it's overwhelming.

"Does it feel good, Toni?" Bruce whispers, pulling up. His pupils are blown wide, a faint tint of green around them that she loves when she can focus, and she knows her look the same. "It's okay," he says in the same quiet voice. "It's okay." And then his mouth is slamming down against hers, his fingers twisting and thrusts hitting just right, and there's no way, because this isn't what she needs in sex, and it's sudden, and he swallowing her cries with his tongue as she clenches around him, lost, and equally surprised when he follows.

He holds her after, the ridges of her arc reactor digging into his chest that he doesn't complain about. Just cards his fingers through her hair, not pulling it from her face, leaving his lips against her forehead like he either wants to breathe life into her or suck out whatever's wrong with her. Because there is something wrong.

"It's never felt like that," she admits, shakes when he just tightens his hold.

(Later, she will tease him for his clinging cuddles behind the safety of a mug of coffee and soldering iron, and he will just roll his eyes in good nature and sneak a plate of real food down to her a few hours after. He won't ask about the times before and she won't mention last night, because it's still weird and new. But later, not tonight but the night after, she will ask him to do it again, and she'll expect him to say no, because unless you're in charge you don't get to make those decisions, and she'll always let Bruce, who has had so little control, be in charge. And she'll be so shocked at his agreement that it will show on her face, because she isn't always fast enough with him, and his eyes will flash with that rage that is always in the Hulk's eyes, but he'll take her to bed and there won't be any of it. She'll spend a week away from New York just to think about it, about Bruce and how weirdly different it all is, and he'll just smile and _get it_) but for now, she just stays.


End file.
